Make sure to "set mainlineLinux yes; set arcNumber 2097" in u-boot since this is mainline linux kernel.

After you booted using this uImage, you can install and load kernel modules. When you "ipkg install kernel-module-xyz", remember to run "/opt/sbin/depmod -a" afterwards, then you should be able to "/opt/sbin/modprobe xyz".

Very nice indeed to add all the optware packages and expecially the kernel modules to SheevaPlug.

>To get the uImage, you can either extract it from data.tar.gz in the ipk (actually a tar.gz)

How exactly do you get the uImage out? I downloaded the ipk to a linux box and tried “tar x” on it, but got nothing for a long time and hit ctrl+C to exit. Please pardon my newbieness.

>Make sure to "set mainlineLinux yes; set arcNumber 2097" in u-boot since this is mainline linux kernel.

Again pardon my ignorance. I'm looking at the “Writing jaunty Filesystem” pdf. It's a bit daunting. I have a Marvell>> prompt, and have done “printenv”. What do I do to tftp the image? Does it have to do with setting mtdparts, bootargs, and bootcmd in addition to the environment variables you mention?

There're various ways to boot a kernel, tftp/nfs, flash it into nand and boot from /dev/mtd1, or putting it on external USB partition. You'll need to adjust u-boot bootcmd accordingly. I suggest you read the docs and get familiar with that.

In the most simple case, where you already boot from /dev/mtd1, you just need to flash, no need to change other u-boot env besides the mainlineLinux and arcNumber. You can use the existing ubuntu rootfs with newer kernel.

I got the kernel installed and booting. I'm trying to install modules. After following the instructions you gave I don't have a /ipkg/sbin/ directory to run depmod from.

If I run /sbin/depmod -a I get :

Quote

root@debian:~# /sbin/depmod -aWARNING: Couldn't open directory /lib/modules/2.6.30-rc2: No such file or directoryFATAL: Could not open /lib/modules/2.6.30-rc2/modules.dep.temp for writing: No such file or directory

There is no /lib/modules/2.6.30-rc2 directory but there is a /opt/lib/modules/2.6.30-rc2/ directory. I must be missing a step but I have reviewed them a couple times now.

"ipkg install module-init-tools" so you get /opt/sbin/depmod and /opt/sbin/modprobe.If you want to use /sbin/depmod and /sbin/modprobe, there might be parameters to use /opt/lib/modules/.. as top modules directory.It may sounds strange why install everything under /opt, actually this is to avoid conflict with your existing main firmware/rootfs.

I missed dm-mod in the previous kernel .config, so device-mapper was missing from the kernel. Now just added those and bumped IPK_VERSION to 2."/opt/bin/ipkg update" and you should have dm-mod available. You don't have to reflash uImage.Just try "/opt/bin/depmod -a; /opt/bin/modprobe dm-mod" and see if it helps (I'm not near a plug to test)On the other hand, device-mapper is needed for RAID, LVM and encrypted file system, so it's probably ok to ignore the errors if you're not using these features.

ok I tried that and had a new problem while booting. I went back and reinstalled everything and I'm still now getting:

Quote

* Starting portmap daemon... [ OK ] * Starting NFS common utilities FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.30-rc2/modules.dep: No such file or directoryFATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.30-rc2/modules.dep: No such file or directoryFATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.30-rc2/modules.dep: No such file or directory [ OK ]

If you read /etc/init.d/nfs-*, these scripts are using /sbin/modprobe and expect modules to be at /lib/modules/`uname -r`.This of course does not match the one installed by optware.One hackish thing you can try before ubuntu supplies compatible kernel and kernel modules, is to backup /sbin/modprobe and /lib/modules, then "ln -s /opt/sbin/modprobe /sbin/modprobe; ln -s /opt/lib/modules /lib/modules".